Will we continue to be a country of laws or take the road of authority? My hope for the new Congress is to restore the Constitution as the guiding force in the affairs of the United States rather than the personal will of the President.
Our country was founded on reason. The founding fathers rejected the divine right of kings in favor of a clearly articulated republic with balanced powers, split among three equal branches of government. They believed this would prevent the overreaching power of government from afflicting the people.
The clearest and most present danger we face as a nation is not terror. It is those who would use fear to elevate order over justice by replacing the will of the people with their own judgement arrived at in secret.
The Congress must open the barred doors of government to let the people reenter the halls they own, and see what is being fashioned there in their name, with their treasure and without their permission.
Inevitably, hearings into false intelligence, domestic spying, secret prisons, torture, and kidnapping will be resisted by those who claim to air such things in the public arena is to weaken the United States. Our country, like any structure, is only as strong as its foundation. The Constitution -- its protections and prohibitions -- is the bedrock upon which it stands. Allowing these abuses to stand uncorrected, even unreported, will render it sand, easily washed away by the next storm tide of crisis.
"They'll have me whipp'd for speaking true, thou'lt have me whipp'd for lying; and somtimes I am whpp'd for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind of thing than a fool; and yet I would not be thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o' both sides and left nothing in the middle" -- King Lear, Act I, sc iv
Exposing our faults may whip our pride. But the salve of truth will heal us. Our Constitution won't survive the infection that ignoring them will cause.
